“In the mid October evenings, I find myself fighting through a fog.
It’s just the turning of the seasons I tell myself, but I don’t believe it anymore.
It’s the third year that I’ve felt this It comes and goes as the willows freeze.
I don’t handle it well, and I know it but it’s the hardest when you know it’s coming soon”
- Dream Journal, "Harness"
Every year as fall scrapes the leaves off the New England trees, I end up sitting in a foggy melancholy. A low buzz that comes with less sunlight and vitamin D. This feeling's return has become a pattern for the last couple of years in the dreary days between the peak of fall and the onset of winter. Two years ago, during the turning of the seasons, I ended up writing about this feeling on my song “Harness,” which eventually became the title track for my second album “You’re My Harness, and You Know It.”
In past years, what made this feeling heavy was how unexpected it was. When I don't see it coming, I tend to sink right into it, and once I'm in, it can be a sticky place to get out of. During the first fall since releasing “Harness,” this feeling came back over me. I noticed it out of the corner of my eye, but it was a touch too late. I fell back into the familiar fog. This time I could turn on “Harness” and listen to my prior self sing:
“It’s just the turning of the seasons, I tell myself, but I don’t believe it, anymore." I don’t know if it made the dreariness lift any faster, but it was comforting to hear my past self name it and describe it honestly in a way that I could connect to further down the line.
Another page has turned, and the next summer has just started to fray at the edges. In August, I started performing live again with a solo set of Dream Journal songs at The Rat City Music Festival. This was the first time I had ever performed “Harness” in front of a crowd. More recently, I have been working on full live band arrangements of Dream Journal songs. With three of the old Dream Journal band members now in New York, I have assembled an updated lineup of some of my closest friends still in Boston. One of the first songs we have been working on is “Harness.” Singing it and continuing to digest these lines has helped me anticipate this feeling in a new way.
“I’m not better on my own, I’m not better off alone.”
It has always been easy for me to retreat into winter. The cold makes it harder to go outside and travel far, but I know spending more time with friends and family has always helped. I hope bringing this project out of my bedroom again and into a shared space will help me hold still and carry more warmth with me into winter.
“You’re my harness, and you know it, but I love the way you show it, and hold me still.”
This song represents a lot of what Dream Journal means to me as a project. Since I started writing these songs, my main intention has been to use songwriting as a form of journaling -- to document the feelings of a moment through my music and file them into a history of myself. My discography is starting to serve as a multi-year journal of these feelings with patterns of its own.
These songs have become my favorite way to process experiences. I can document a feeling close to the source and let it go. Even if I don’t have enough time to process it in the moment, I can catch the song later down the line and process it when the time feels right.
- Matthew <3